Complaint Review: Eugene Pyvavarov

The short of this message is to AVOID web developer Eugene Pyvavarov (also known as Ievgen Pyvovarov) either through oDesk or his business identity of Life Is Good Labs (www.lifeisgoodlabs.com). You can also find him on LinkedIn by searching for Eugene Pyvavarov. I think he also goes by the name bsn.dev on some other channels like Skype and Gmail. He also has a site at http://eugen.kiev.ua/, and is on GitHub at https://github.com/bsn.

I came to Eugene Pyvavarov with clear specs and fairly basic website deliverable. I had even taken the initiative to find preexisting codebases that could be utilized, as well as WordPress themes and plugins that were extremely close to what I was looking for. I had hoped that his high-ish hourly rate (around $40/hour, which is super high for Kiev, Ukraine) and his 5,000+ completed hours on oDesk would be a recipe for success.

Unfortunately, that was not the case, and I am now out several thousand dollars, have web code that is complete junk and has been reviewed by several web developers, both domestic and abroad, that say it is completely unreasonable that I paid anything for it, much less $40 an hour. I have sent several letters to Eugene Pyvavarov (AKA Ievgen Pyvavarov) trying to seek at least some return of funds, but he has not made any steps to reach a resolution. I currently have a legal contact in Kiev, Ukraine who is compiling information to bring to court. At the same time, I am seriously considering doing a credit card chargeback.

oDesk does not provide any help in a situation like this. In all honesty, it doesnt look like oDesk ever provides help at all, all due to their time, not quality guarantee. If the contractor logs in with the oDesk system, it doesnt matter if they produce complete crap, you are still charged. If you can find a great person, then oDesk is a good billing tool, but if I can get completely screwed by one of their higher rate freelancer with thousands of completed hours, then success doesnt seem likely using their system.

The sign that should have made me RUN AWAY was Eugene Pyvavarovs rude, abrasive behavior at the start. I had chatted with him briefly the day before, but after talking with some other people, I had a few questions I wanted resolved at the start, related to such essential things as framework, theme, plugins, preexisting codebases, etc. He told me point blank he was done talking to me and wouldnt answer questions. I chalked it up to him being a programmer and thought his near 5 star reviews on oDesk, high rate, and hours completed would make up for it.

He never even looked at the preexisting codebases, plugins, and all the other things I found that would have jumpstarted development. Since his code was complete junk which no one could get to work and had no commenting whatsoever, I had to have it redone from scratch. However, when the new developer looked at my specs and everything else, he was able to get the job done for 10% of what Eugene Pyvavarov charged, and it had MORE features.

So life must be pretty good at Life Is Good Labs (www.lifeisgoodlabs.com) when you can charge 10 to 15 times to going rate on a very simple project!

Communication with Ievgen Pyvovarov was especially bad. He would go for long periods without telling me what was going on or what feature he was working on. If I had known he was rolling the project from scratch, costing me a bundle and setting the delivery date further and further into the future, I would have stopped work immediately and found someone else.

It's a shame that near the end of his original budgeted time, I finally found out that the project was not even half way finished. This is after telling me that everything was okay in weeks past! Then again, its good that I stopped the project when I did, since once again, I have had it looked at several other developers and they have all said it is overpriced garbage.

So if you see Eugene Pyvavarov (AKA Ievgen Pyvovarov), Life Is Good Labs (www.lifeisgoodlabs.com), or bsn.dev bidding on your jobs on oDesk, do yourself a favor and just delete him. Maybe dont even think about using oDesk at all, since it almost amounts to sending Western Union payment overseas since they dont really provide you any protection when things go south. As it stands, I would have been better off burning the money, since thats essentially what I did in the end with Eugene Pyvavarov.